Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: John: We've broken out! Ah, the blessed freedom of it all! Have you got a nail file, these handcuffs are killin me! I was framed, I'm innocent, I don't want to go!
Paul: Sorry for disturbing you, girls!
John: I betchya can't guess what I was in for!
[laughs psychotically] Vol 2. Week 6
Setting: Season Three Episode "The List"
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Two-dozen pairs of eyes followed her every move, flickered in the darkness as she walked, bright in her white suit. The roamed over Scully's skin, up her petite form from the tips of her shoes to the top of her bright head, the first woman they had seen in how long? Despite the assurances that she had given both the warden and Mulder, there was the small part of her that was well aware that she was a woman in a very masculine environment, one compounded with the anger, hate, and frustration of men who knew that the only way they were possibly leaving this cell block was to meet their date with the man in the gas chamber. And she could feel that hate and resentment like a miasma clouding the block as she moved towards the showers, she could almost see it hanging in the air, clinging to the dark-gray painted walls, thick with the condensed heat of the sticky, Florida late-August summertime.
This place bred rumors and superstition. It was a place of no light, no sun, now air, and no hope. The only things anyone had to hold on to in this place was hate and fear. It was small wonder then that a story about a executed convict coming back from the dead to enact his justice on those he held a grudge against held such sway, and took root in their imagination festering like the bodies in the under-cooled prison morgue. Ghost lurked in the shadows of cells, death waiting to claim them inevitably, whether it be in the gas chamber or at the hands of one of their fellow, doomed convicts, snatching them away well before the time they wanted to go.
Strong, able fingers closed around her mouth even before she could see them, could react, or could scream. Quietly the voice in her ear whispered, "I'm not going to hurt you. I only want to talk to you, okay? I know who he's going to kill. There's a list. One of the cons has it. A man named Roque."
The powerful hand released her as she spun away, glaring at the tall, African-American guard, who looked silently guilty, sorry he had frightened her, but terrified of something…of what? Neech Manley, returned from the dead? "Who are you," she demanded, her voice shaking slightly. She hated that.
"My name's Parmelly. I want to help you." He looked sincere enough, but for what reason? He was just a guard here. But then Scully knew about guards in prisons. They saw things and heard things, from the prisoners, from each other, and they often knew things that wardens would rather keep quiet. She wanted to ask him why, to demand it out of him, but in the distance she could hear the voice of the other guard, Fornier, calling to her, as Parmelly slipped, quietly back into the shadows of the shower, without even an explanation at all as to why he was resorting to all of this secrecy.
She turned to Fornier waiting at the doorway of the showers, watching her with curious wariness. She shrugged by way of response, glancing around the drab, depressing room. "I was just looking around."
Fornier curiosity deepened into dark disapproval. "Not a place for a woman to be doing that alone." He waited for her to move past him, and fell in step behind her. She wondered if it was for her own protection or to keep her from snooping further into things that the warden would rather the FBI didn't find inside this prison.
Mulder was still in the prisoner Speranza's cell, and she didn't even bother to catch his eye or urge him to finish up. "Mulder, I'm ready to go."
His head snapped up, and his eyes searched hers for the briefest of moments. Only he would get the meaning behind those words, the layers of anxiety that lay just beneath her cool, demanding surface. She was doing just as he had asked as she came in, when it got too much, she was leaving. He nodded quickly.
"Okay, I'll be right there," he glanced at Fornier, who waited patiently as Scully turned, and marked right towards the door at the end of the block. She raised her hand, palm flat, against the heavy metal door, banging loudly as her voice carried, almost shrilly, through the bars inset in the doors one window. "Guard!"
Behind her Mulder's loping steps sounded easily enough in the open space of the cells, not bothering to mask the concern as he leaned in close around her. "What's wrong, Scully?" His tone carried a small, hidden threat in it. If her skin didn't want to crawl off her body she perhaps would have smiled at the idea of Mulder trying to do anything to anyone who upset her.
"I'm just ready to get out of here," she replied evenly, waiting as the guard outside the block carefully unlocked and opened the door, allowing herself and Mulder out. As he did, she felt eyes on her once again, specific eyes, watching her with a sort of knowing. She turned her face towards the first cell, the one with the man named Roque…the one who supposedly knew Parmelly's so-called "list".
In a place like this, she could see why anyone would believe anything.
Just the closing of the large, clanging door behind her allowed the muscles in Scully's neck to loosen, as suddenly the air became easier to breathe around her. She exhaled slowly, unclenching the fists she didn't even know she had formed as Mulder stood watching her, dark concern on his face as he worried his lower lip gently.
"You OK," he asked after several long moments, appearing torn between checking her head-to-toe for injuries or storming back into the cell block to demand who had spooked her so much. And really, now that she was away from that block, from those men, from that hopelessness, superstition, and fear, she felt quite silly for reacting the way that she did. Her cheeks flushed as she nodded, her composure returning as she initiated their walk down the hallway towards the reception and entrance of the prison.
"I was startled, that was all," she muttered, becoming more embarrassed by the idea by the minute. Really, it was a prison, it was not like she hadn't been in one of those before. She tried to place herself back on stable footing, falling into the familiar forms of investigator and agent, pushing aside her nerves. "I was approached by one of the guards in there, a Parmelly. He came out at me in the showers, he didn't want to be known, but he claims he wants to help us?"
"Help us by scaring the hell out of you," Mulder growled, not heatedly, but certainly not particularly pleased. She shot him a brief, appreciative smile, but continued on.
"He said there's a list, I guess he means it's Manley's list of people he planned on killing, the one he swore he had when he was executed. Parmelly is of the opinion that Roque has it."
Mulder's eyes were sharp as he frowned. "Did he say why?"
"No, he didn't say anything much at all. Almost as soon as he got that much out, Fornier came looking for me and he hid. Parmelly apparently didn't want anyone to know he was talking to us…or that he knew anything about this so-called 'list."
"He didn't say who was on it?"
"No," she replied shortly as they neared the reception desk, turning in the badges given to them as federal law enforcement visitors, and gathered the weapons they had turned in. Scully signed out of the visitors log with a perfunctory hand, waiting for Mulder as she slipped her service weapon back in its holster. Without a word between each other they walked out of the prison's front gates, though Scully could hear Mulder's mind whirling, spinning with the information she shared.
He at least waited till they reached their rental car outside before theorizing further. "You think Roque has the list and is orchestrating the murders within the prison." He didn't ask it was a statement of fact for him. It was strange and bemusing how well he could read her now. But then, it was Fox Mulder, his specialty was reading people, and as close as they had become in the last two plus years, and after all that they had been through together, she would hope he knew a thing or two about her.
"Why, you think it really is Neech Manley's reincarnated spirit?" She teased him more out of habit and comfort than because she really suspected he thought that. Her unease wanted to fall into familiar patterns of discourse between them.
"I didn't say that, but how much influence does a man like Roque, sitting on death row in Florida really have in the outside world? He's there for simple murder, not organized crime, not gangland killings. I doubt he's had a visitor from the outside once since he's been on the block."
"Perhaps he isn't organizing it from the outside then. Perhaps it's an inside job with the guards, using Neech Manley legend as a cover. Why else would Parmelly approach me like that, afraid to allow Fornier to see him talking to me?"
"Could be," Mulder acknowledged as he unlocked her door. "I want to talk to Roque further on this. I doubt he'll give me much, but it will at least give me something to work on to see if he's lying or not."
"I'll see if I can get in to see the other body tomorrow then," she nodded, their familiar roles in the case coming easily as she stepped inside the car. Now well clear of the cinder-gray prison, Scully felt herself returning to something of her normal self, the oppressive despair now gone as she shook herself slightly. She had let her imagination and the fears of both Mulder and the warden get the better of her. She was a strong, confident FBI agent. This should not bother her in the least.
"Thank you," Mulder murmured quietly as he put the keys in the ignition, starting the car. It was out of place, and she stared at him in surprise, confused as to what the sign of gratification meant.
"What for?" She couldn't think of anything in particular she had done that day he needed to be grateful for.
"For doing what I asked…for leaving when you felt you needed to." He didn't look at her, instead focused on pulling the car out of the parking space. "For doing the very thing you always ask me to do, and I always conveniently seem to ignore."
She laughed slightly. "For taking personal responsibility."
"Something like that," he replied wryly. "I do worry about you, Scully. I know your capable, talented, brilliant, strong, those are all things I understand about you, and you don't need to prove those to me. I've seen you come out of things that would crush a lesser person, male or female. You don't have to prove anything to me….I worry you try too hard to prove it to yourself."
The reactionary part of Scully's brain wanted to tacitly remind him that he was the one constantly fluttering over her, wanting to hold her back left and right if she got so much as a paper cut. But then perhaps that was why he over-reacted, Scully's fierce independence meant she never asked for help, never begged for understanding, and never, ever allowed herself the luxury of weakness or fear.
It was OK to not be fine, he was saying. If only it were that simple for her to be that way, even around him, especially around him, a man whose very life might depend on her reactions and whether she could handle something as simple as interviewing a man on death row. How many times in just the last year had her levelheaded reactions and her ability to stay cool when others might become flustered saved him, especially when he wasn't in the best frame of mind?
"I'm fine, Mulder," she murmured quietly, wrapping around the old, familiar blanket of plausible deniability. "Just fine."